Anaiyyun: Prayer for the Whale: An interview with Kiliii Yuyan

Filmmaker Kiliii Yuyan has been a friend of DPReview's for several years. He spoke at our PIX2015 event in Seattle and joined us later that same year in what was then called Barrow, Alaska (now known as Utqiaġvik) for a long-form video shoot.

Since then, Kiliii has returned to Alaska several times, working with the people and communities of the north slope, and his new film, 'Anaiyyun: Prayer for the Whale' premiered earlier this year at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). Anaiyyun: Prayer for the Whale is a short documentary film that tells the story of an Iñupiaq whaling crew in northern Alaska.

Since its premier at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) in spring, Anaiyyun has been shown all over the world, and is currently being featured in the National Geographic Short Films Showcase. We caught up with Kiliii recently, and asked him to explain more about the project.

What's the new film about?

It's focused on the spirituality of whaling. It's intended to give you the perspective of the people up there and a sense of how very different the world of the whaler is, and how different the culture is. To put you on the ice, and let you absorb the beauty of the arctic. I like to say that being on the sea ice is a bit like being on the open ocean. There are long interminable stretches of boredom and silence, quiet. It's very peaceful but those moments are punctuated with moments of sheer terror.

On the Arctic Ocean, Iñupiat paddle their umiaq skinboat. Spring whaling by umiaq is made possible by the shorefast sea ice. As the sea ice gets thinner each spring from a warming climate, traditional whaling becomes increasingly challenging.

That's how the film is, too. There's a lot of quiet observation, time just being there, but it's broken up by moments where the sea ice collapses, and polar bears appear. I really wanted to do something experimental and introduce the indigenous perspective. It's not a typical Hollywood-style structure. It puts you on the ice, and puts whaling into context inside that culture.

This is the latest piece that's come out of a long-term relationship you've been cultivating with the communities of the North Slope in Alaska. How did it all begin?

Well if I remember rightly, you asked me to join you on a video shoot up there a few years ago! But the reason I wanted to go there is that it's the only place where skin on frame boats are still being used, outside of Greenland. And the Iñupiat are a role model culture for northern indigenous peoples. People look at the Iñupiat like 'how did they do it? How did they keep their culture so traditional yet have so much prosperity?' They're more isolated than most places, but there are many places just as remote which haven't done as well for themselves.

The Iñupiat haven't avoided modernity at all - they've embraced it

I originally went there thinking that the culture was so traditional because the people had somehow magically avoided modernity. But over time what I've discovered is that they haven't avoided modernity at all - they've embraced it. But because they were smart, they managed to keep their culture and its traditions alive by placing a lot of importance on them, and reintroducing it into their education system.

It's hard to think about all those things when you can't eat. When there's no food on the table, and the ice is getting thin and the whales are leaving and there are all these massive changes. It's hard to hold on. They do it by embracing modernity in a smart way, and as a result they've retained one of the most beautiful cultures on the planet while still being successful. Despite the fact that Christianity has changed the Iñupiaq culture probably more than anything, the idea of the gift of the whale is old. Much much older than Christianity, right back to the shamanistic tradition, and it's still alive.

Kiliii Yuyan is an indigenous Nanai/Hézhè photographer and journalist, based in Seattle.

His clients include The Nature Conservancy and National Geographic.

Are you hoping to change the way that outsiders think about that culture, and the culture of whaling?

This isn't a political film. My intent is to give people the indigenous perspective. It's fine to have films that are overtly political, but the thing that's often missing is the indigenous viewpoint. Because the population is so low, indigenous peoples in the US and Canada just don't have much of a voice. For the most part, stories told about indigenous peoples are told by colonizers, not by those who have been colonized, and you can really see the difference.

I've shown this film to people who have spent a lot of time either with me on the North Slope or people who've been around the Iñupiaq culture a lot and they get it - it makes sense to them. But then I'll show it to someone who is used to seeing western films and they find it harder to watch because it doesn't follow the standard format.

I hope that outsiders who watch this film will understand that there is no single right way to live.

At Nalukataq, the summer whaling festival, the village comes out to celebrate a successful whaling season and to give thanks to the whale for its gift. Here, successful whalers must do the blanket toss. They are thrown up to thirty feet in the air, and depend on everyone's hands to land safely.

You've said that the communities of the North Slope are at ground zero for climate change - how is that affecting them?

Well, the truth is they're figuring it out. The Iñupiat have a lot of agency, they're an extremely competent people, and Alaska has the kind of legal structure where hopefully they'll be able to mitigate a lot of the problems. The Yup'ik communities on the west coast of Alaska are not so lucky— they are not as economically prosperous.

With a film like this it's easy to fall into the romanticism of the Arctic

What kind of feedback have you had from those communities?

The highest praise I've received so far was having an Inuk look at it and tell me that his kids need to see it. With a film like this it's easy to fall into the romanticism of the Arctic, but when I've shown it to locals who grew up with this stuff and it's their everyday, that kind of feedback means a lot.

My hope is that the young people of those indigenous communities will be able to see the film and take inspiration from it.

Comments

It's a whitewashed film. The major issues with whaling as compared to the killing of other animals for food are a) conservation, and b) the brutality.

a) can be solved, there are (to my knowledge) whale species that are not currently threatened. b) is the much larger problem - killing an animal of this size is hard and bloody work, it's not a bolt to the neck or a shot to the heart. It involves a lot of suffering on the side of the animal, and this has been completely cut out from this film.

Many cultures have had a lot of traditions that have been dropped in the process of modernisation, because they are problematic and the need for them disappeared. There is no reason why the Inuit, now living in modern, heated houses, travelling on snow mobiles and communicating with mobile phones, still need to whale!

If you think something is important to your culture, but it causes a lot of suffering for others, maybe you should stop.

Human starvation causes a lot of suffering as well. There doesn’t look to be a lot of alternative local sources of food. The alternative deaths for the whales are by other reds toes or starvation.......don’t know that the humans are causing more suffering compared to the alternatives.

But yes, if it was a wealthy artic oil town with a Whole Foods, I would agree with you.

The few times I have traveled to far north Canada, the food in grocery stores is outrageously expensive. When you have to ship food in from far away, that’s the reality.

They used every square inch of that whale. They obviously have a great deal of respect for that animal and the environment that produced it as evidenced by the cerimony. Humans are entitled to be predators as well instead of going on welfare.

A gallon of milk was $13 last time I was up there, and that was 3 years ago. I can't imagine it's become cheaper since then. The point is, what most Americans/Canadians would consider western 'staples' are prohibitively expensive, up there in the high North. If you just ate what you bought at the grocery stores, you'd be burning through a frightening amount of money every month on food alone.

I need to see if I can get a polarizer filter for my DJI Mavic Pro. I really like those shots of the whales from above and what to shoot some here. We have lots of Grey whales and Orcas. Wondering if the glare from the sky on the water would be a problem

i am torn between respect for these cutural food pathways and the right of indigenous people to pursue tradition, and the right of a creature with very probably a mind as complex as a human to not be murdered for food

i see that this community has replaced traditional housing technologies with western style boxes with western industrially produced housing materials, i wonder if, with the right initiatives in place, other food animals could be exploited for protein, instead of the highly intelligent beings curerently used .

I unequivocally agree with you.I don't buy the crap that once you've chanted, prayed, danced & pranced to the Great Spirit, NOW you have the blessings to kill an animal that strives to survive in your time zone. These animals hold higher IQ (not to confuse with Image Quality) than the a**hole who called this killing "culture"Let's not forget that the Greenland and Russian aborigines where the right inhabitants around the Polar Circle. What we call now Eskimos in Alaska and Inuit in Canada, are Northern Algonquins who were flown and positioned there to populate the islands so both the US and Canada could claim territorial rights to stop the USSR to claim territory and close the gap to America during the Cold War.So they can keep praying to the great spirits in Washington and Ottawa to send them food and medicine, cable and internet, so they can leave these magnificent animals ALONE.

When the global human population was very low, and technology was still bows and arrows, there may have been some human bravery and dignity in the hunting of large animals. Nowadays, when humans are, from the perspective of every other living thing on the planet, an out-of-control blight, it all just seems so unnecessary and ugly. High-powered rifles and enough well-fed, well-equipped hunters take almost all the danger of any such hunt away, and it only ends up in the foregone conclusion of one more dead whale, or one more dead polar bear, and the continuing spread of the blight.

I feel like being blunt here, I don't care at all about this community hacking up Wales, if they die out I couldn't care less they certainly don't deserve documentary coverage. They aren't going on my Christmas card list. Stuff them.

You are judging this culture, but you certainly do more bad things for the planet in your everyday life of a citizen of a "modern" country by generating loads of pollution and garbages, than the Iñupiaq do by killing a whale from time to time. Those people, closer to the wild than you will ever be, always take care to not kill more than needed to allow reproduction. Japan, Norway and Iceland, citizens of "modern" countries, certainly do more harm to the whales than the Iñupiaq...

Karroly I'm certainly in favour of a general reduction in population which I believe is happening naturally. I just remember a video of faero islanders chopping up dying whales on their beach when I was young everything was red it was the sickest thing I've ever seen I wouldn't even talk to a resident of that place and it would take all my control to not go for them. I'm not sure why the subjects of this film are much different.

the brutality of the kill and the butchering has been excised from this filmed narrative,,, it is like seeing the cow and the next cut scene is cellophane wrapped hamburger meat in a supermarket chiller..., the entire process in between is missing .... it makes for a very different film in my opinion

also, the " balkanization "of Wales was a quick mental picture i took away between the moment i read the spelling [ diction?] and the correction

Cultures shouldn't change because of outsiders forcing their "correct" viewpoints on them. These North American indigenous people, or tribes in the Amazon rainforest, or so on, have created their own culture because of their own way of life. One may say their culture would become more like ours with time because they become more and more connected with the outside world, but it isn't for us to criticize their way of subsistence.

Also, anyone who has a first hand view of the glaciers and icebergs can tell the globe is warming up, by those former glacier lines and now barren moraines. There are so many places in the world where if you spend a day or two there in the nature you can learn how climate change has affected the animals living there. I don't know how people can still deny this.

The videos showing Icebergs pulverizing to the sea is a Spring phenomenon. It happens every year. I guess you, of all people, should know that there are hot springs right in the middle of the North Pole, uh? You should also realize that millions of year ago our whole continent was covered with ice. How do you think we got the right conditions to inhabit this and other parts of the Globe? By WARMING.Now, about those doomsday prophets who want to bark and cry all the way to the bank as their Messiah Al Gore does, their time is ending. Follow the money and see who is profiting big time with this form of mass scare.Just before you begin to moral me, let me tell you that we ALL have the civic and moral duty to moderate consumerism and domestic & industrial waste.

I wouldn't focus on criticising their indiginous cultural ways, but just point out that they have themselves largely abandoned them, turning to many modern consumer products like snowmobiles, high-powered rifles, box-housing and smoking etc. The pressure to do this is obviously very high, and just what seems to happen when coming into contact with the modern, consumerist culture. The result is a hybrid and we have ancient values mixing with TV culture, shopping malls and the internet. It is the latter that is so remorselessly and indiscriminately destructive, and which will soon make this earth uninhabitable for all humans.

I'm not judging. I understand its culture and they need to harvest to survive. I'm sure I'd be doing the same thing. Is there an alternative? Fish farms? Should we all be donating food to the region? Does it depend on whether they believe whales have intelligence. Whales dont appear intelligent. They cant do a lot of intelligent things like humans can. Lets all hope we dont encounter any hungry superior intelligent aliens deciding to harvest us low intelligence humans for food. It would be the natural order of things. This isnt meant to flame, just create discussion.

Been to the Canadian Arctic last year. It's shocking for someone who eat ice cream in their heated home in winter but people actually have to hunt there to survive. Logistics is the biggest problem. Since the sea thaws only during the two summer months everything have to be shipped, mostly by air, up there. A can of Soda cost $5, and people love them so much that diabetes is becoming a problem. Still better than alcohol. Alaska north slope fares better with the road system and the oil, but things are still costly.

Few foods we could donate is as nutritious as raw cetacean blubber. With close to none plants around (the exception being the crow berries available only in late September) people need the vitamin and other nutrition in it to survive. Subsistence hunting like that been going on for a thousand years.

It was the modern commercial whaling that wrecked havoc to the whale population, not the natives. Mark your opponent well.

MarioV, Whales are actually very intelligent, as are many other mammals. Try to understand how they survive in their environments - not only as individuals, but in cooperative communities. Not to be condescending, I'd suggest watching a few good wildlife documentaries. You'd pick up on it in a hurry.

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